C. James KochChairman
Martin F. RoperPresident and Chief Executive Officer
William F. UrichChief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Thomas W. LanceVice President of Operations
John C. GeistVice President of Sales
David L. GrinnellVice President of Brewing

The Samuel Adams brand began in 1984 with Samuel Adams Lager, a 4.8% abv amber or Vienna lager.[5]Jim Koch, the sixth-generation, first-born son to follow in his family's brewing footsteps, brewed his first batch of the beer in his kitchen, using the original family recipe for Louis Koch Lager.[6] At the time, Koch was working at Boston Consulting Group after receiving BA, MBA and JD degrees from Harvard University. At Harvard, Koch met Harry Rubin and Lorenzo Lamadrid. Both Rubin and Lamadrid were graduates of Harvard Business School. In December 1984, Koch left his career at Boston Consulting Group and along with Rubin and Lamadrid, founded the Samuel Adams brewery. As co-owners Koch, Rubin, and Lamadrid, played different roles. Koch played the role of publicist. This paved the way for Samuel Adams' trademark commercials, which featured Koch. Rubin assumed the financial and business management role in the company. Lamadrid played a major role as one of the lead investors in the company. Samuel Adams would be the first step for Rubin and Lamadrid who later became prominent businessmen in their fields. Shortly thereafter, they optimized the recipe with the help of Joseph Owades, the man credited with the invention of light beer in the 1970s.

Koch, Rubin, and Lamadrid agreed on the name Samuel Adams after the Boston patriot, who fought for American independence, and who also had inherited a brewing tradition from his father. In March 1985, the beer was re-introduced as Samuel Adams Boston Lager, at the re-creation of the first battle of the American Revolution on Patriot's Day. Three months later, it was voted "Best Beer in America" at the Great American Beer Festival, in which 93 national and regional beers competed. The publicity that followed helped the Boston Beer Company's sales grow to 7,393,000 liters (63,000 barrels) in 1989. The beer was first put on tap at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain.

The brand was first produced under contract by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, best known for their Iron City brand of beer. Over the years, the brand has been produced under contract at various brewing facilities with excess capacity, ranging from Stroh breweries, Portland's original Blitz-Weinhard brewery (shuttered in 1999), Cincinnati'sHudepohl-Schoenling brewery (eventually purchased by the Boston Beer Company in early 1997), and industry giant SABMiller. The Boston Beer Company also has a small R&D brewery located in Boston (Jamaica Plain), Massachusetts, where public tours and beer tastings are offered. The brewery occupies part of the premises of the old Haffenreffer Brewery.[7][8]

In the mid-1990s, Jim Koch returned to his hometown of Cincinnati to purchase the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewery, where his father apprenticed in the 1940s. This was also one of the first steps the company took to reduce reliance on contract brewing.

Brew kettles at the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery

The company's success occurred in conjunction with the U.S. craft beer movement. By 1995, some 600 independent breweries were producing speciality beers in the United States. That year, The Boston Beer Company went public, selling shares of Class A Common Stock on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker symbol, "SAM". These shares, however, have minimal voting rights. Instead, the company is controlled through its Class B Common Stock, of which Koch owns 100% of the shares.[9] Boston Beer launched Hardcore Cider in 1997, and Twisted Tea brand in 2000.

The Brewers Association — the trade association representing small and independent American craft brewers — list the Boston Beer Company #1 on their top 50 craft and overall brewing companies in the U.S., based on beer sales volume and the craft brewer definition in 2013.[10]

Following Jim Koch’s great-great grandfather’s recipe, Samuel Adams continued to use traditional brewing processes, including decoction mash (a four vessel process) and krausening (a secondary fermentation), which allows the ingredients in Samuel Adams Boston Lager to come together and form layers of complex flavor. Boston Lager is also dry hopped using the Hallertau Mittelfrueh hops for an enhanced hop signature in the aroma and finish.[11]

First brewed in 2014, Samuel Adams Rebel IPA is a West Coast style India Pale Ale that features citrus and grapefruit highlights. These bright flavors are balanced by subtle pine notes, allowing for an exceptionally smooth pour, without sacrificing any of the character you'd expect from a West Coast style IPA. The beer is brewed with five American hops - American Cascade, Simcoe, Chinook, Centennial, and Amarillo.[12]

Introduced in 2001, Sam Adams Light is not just a lighter version of Samuel Adams Boston Lager but rather the culmination of over two years of tireless research and brewing trials. It features a crisp and smooth roasted malt finish without any lingering bitterness.[13]

The creation of Samuel Adams Barrel Room Collection was inspired by Belgian monasteries, where the monks' patient approach to blending, aging, and conditioning their beers yielded some wild and flavorful results. For the companies Barrel Room Collection, Samuel Adams developed a blend of yeast called Kosmic Mother Funk, or KMF. Like all yeasts, it's the soul of these beers, and is blended into each at different levels. It's the addition of KMF that adds a whole new wild spectrum of flavors to the beer, from earthy and spicy to floral and sweet.

As the name of these beers implies, the barrel is truly a part of the beer and these aren't just any barrels. After searching and testing many different woods and conditions Samuel Adams found the perfect match for the flavor they were trying to achieve. Originating from Eastern Europe, their barrels are made of oak and were initially used to make Italian brandy. The strong grain of the oak and the residual brandy character impart unique flavors to the beers that they house. The process of aging in these wooden tuns helps soften the beers and mellows out some of their ethanol character.[14]

In 1999, the Boston Beer Company produced Millennium, a single release strong beer with an alcoholic content of 21% by volume (abv). The company followed this up in 2002 with Utopias; at 24% abv, it was marketed as the strongest commercial beer in the world. The company subsequently released new "vintages" of Utopias annually, increasing the alcoholic content to 27% abv by 2007. However, it is no longer the strongest in the world, having since been surpassed by several other beers through the use of freeze distillation.

Utopias is made with caramel, Vienna, Moravian and Bavarian smoked malts, and four varieties of noble hops: Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, Tettnanger, Spalter, and Saaz hops. The beer is matured in scotch, cognac and port barrels for the better part of a year. A limited number of bottles are released each year; in 2007, only 12,000 bottles were produced, and in 2009, only 9,000 bottles were released.[15][16] Sold in a ceramic bottle resembling a copper-finished brewing kettle, a single bottle of Utopias cost $100 in 2002, and $150 in 2009.

In October 2009, the Boston Beer Company announced a two-year project with German brewery Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan to jointly produce a new craft beer named Infinium, to be marketed in both Germany and the U.S. The brewers describe the beer, which is sold in corked bottles and has alcohol content of 10.3% abv, as a Champagne-like "crisp pale brew".[18][19] Approximately 15,000 cases were released in North America in December 2010 at a suggested retail price of $20 per 750 mL bottle,[20] Marketed towards drinkers who would rather toast with beer than Champagne on New Years Eve, Infinium is described by the brewers as "the first new beer style created under the Reinheitsgebot in over a hundred years."[21]

In 2007, The Boston Beer Company collaborated with TIAX laboratories of Cambridge, MA to develop a new type of pint glass. The glass is designed to bring out the flavor of a Samuel Adams Boston Lager and features a curvier shape, thinner walls, a beaded rim and outward-turning lip. One feature of the glass is a neck-and-lip design that helps sustain the head of the beer, which enhances the release of signature Noble hop aromas found in Samuel Adams Boston Lager. A laser-etched nucleation site within the glass maintains flavor release during the drinking experience. The glass is often referred to as the "Perfect Pint" glass.[22]

The company has distributed more than $3 million in capital to more than 350 small food and beverage businesses nationwide enabling them to create or retain more than 2,000 local jobs. The company has also coached more than 4,000 small business owners at various "Speed Coaching" events. [23]

In early 2008, amidst a worldwide shortage of hops—a key ingredient in beer—Boston Beer Company agreed to sell 20,000 pounds of its hops, at cost, to craft brewers throughout the United States. The company selected 108 craft brewers to divide the 20,000 pounds they had spare. This prevented many craft brewers from having to reformulate recipes.[24]

Created in 1996, Samuel Adams LongShot American Homebrew Competition is an annual competition among amateur homebrewers to find the very best homebrewed beers from across the United States. Homebrewers submit their brew to a series of judging and taste tests with the chance to see their creation in larger-scale production and sold on store shelves as part of a Samuel Adams mixed 6-pack the following year.[26]

According to the company's 2006 Annual Report, Boston Beer Company was considering a possible new brewery in Freetown, Massachusetts. The estimated cost would be between $170 and $210 million.

A December 2006 article from SouthCoastToday.com indicated that the proposed Freetown site was still being considered for a brewery location. The facility would be built in the Campanelli Business Park and would cost an estimated $200 million. The new brewery would be estimated to produce between 82 million and 117 million liters (700,000 - 1 million barrels) of beer.

In 2007 and 2008, due to concerns about expected future availability and pricing of brewing capacity at breweries owned by others and Boston Beer Company’s desire to better control its brewing future and to improve efficiencies and costs long term, the company initiated several steps designed to reduce its dependence on breweries owned by others. These steps included the acquisition on June 2, 2008 of substantially all of the assets of the Pennsylvania brewery from Diageo North America, Inc. From 2007 to 2009, core product volume brewed at company-owned breweries increased from approximately 35% to over 95%.

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Since 1990 the company has produced a seasonal fruit beer labelled "Cranberry Lambic". Because "Lambic" describes a spontaneously fermented beer generally produced in Brussels or the nearby Pajottenland region,[28] and the Samuel Adams product is not spontaneously fermented, consumers and brewers charged that "Cranberry Lambic" is mislabeled[29] and could cause consumer confusion. (Michael Jackson, a leading beer critic, called it "a misleading name".[30]) Grant Wood, Senior Brewing Manager at Boston Brewing, defended the name, saying, "I wouldn't consider it mislabeling. Whenever I have served the Cranberry Lambic, I have always been really up front about it. Is it a true lambic made in that region in Belgium? No. Does it taste like one? Yes. So it's sort of our homage to the style without the pain and agony of it."[29]

In 2000–2002, the company sponsored a radio promotion called "Sex for Sam", in which WNEW radio hosts Opie and Anthony encouraged couples from various states to have sex in notable public places in New York City. On August 15, 2002, a Virginia couple was charged with public lewdness after attempting to have sex in a vestibule at St. Patrick's Cathedral; this led to the firing of the radio hosts a week later.

In October 2007, in an incident referred to by the Wall Street Journal as "Sam Adams v. Sam Adams,"[31] the Boston Beer Company demanded that control of the domain names "samadamsformayor.com" and "mayorsamadams.com" be turned over to the company.[32] The domains had been purchased by Portland, Oregon radio station NewsRadio 1190 KEX for the campaign of Portland mayoral candidate, Sam Adams. In a cease-and-desist letter,[32] the company expressed concern that consumers might confuse the mayoral candidate with their beer. In an interview with the Associated Press[33] the company said it was willing to discuss Adams' use of his name on his Web sites, "probably for the length of the time the election is being held."

In April 2008, the Boston Beer Company issued its first recall, because of defects found in certain 12-US-fluid-ounce (350 ml) glass bottles manufactured by a third-party supplier which supplies about a quarter of the bottles the Boston Beer Company uses. The Boston Beer Company stated that they believed fewer than 1% of bottles from the supplier could contain small pieces of glass and issued a recall for the safety of consumers. There were no reports of injuries.[34] News of the recall led to shares of the company dropping by over 3%.[35]

On July 4th 2013, a video commercial for Sam Adams beer was rolled out on the July 4th holiday which created controversy over an omitted phrase. The manufacturer decided to leave out "endowed by their creator" in its invocation of the Declaration of Independence which outraged critics. But Sam Adams said they were just following trade association rules. The company said in a statement: "The Beer Institute Advertising Code says, 'Beer advertising and marketing materials should not include religion or religious themes.' We agree with that and try to adhere to these guidelines." [36]

^Most historical evidence suggests that Adams worked as a maltster and not a brewer; Stanley Baron, Brewed in America: The History of Beer and Ale in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), pp. 74–75. However, Ira Stoll in Samuel Adams: A Life (New York: Free Press, 2008; ISBN 978-0-7432-9911-4; ISBN 0-7432-9911-6), p. 275n16, notes that James Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company, reports having seen a receipt for hops signed by Adams, which indicates that Adams may have done some brewing.